Listen to Coty Kuschinsky, Chief of Staff at Saginaw ISD, discuss how her district has empowered hundreds of teachers and staff to tell “Our Story.”

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Transcript

Tyler Vawser: Good morning and good afternoon to everybody. Thanks so much for joining. This is Apptegy's true first webinar. We're on Zoom calls all the time with superintendents, but we haven't done something quite like this with so many different school leaders from different districts and different parts of the country together.

So thanks so much for joining. We're really excited to have Saginaw present something that they've been doing with ThrillShare for the last few years, and it's gone really well for them. And I think many of you, if you're already using ThrillShare and you're an Apptegy client, some of you are doing some version of this, maybe in a formal way, maybe in an informal way. And I know there's others that are not currently clients and are just kind of curious about what this thing called ThrillShare is and how school districts like Saginaw are using it in innovative ways.

So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here. What we're going to be talking about today is the power of collective authorship. And I'll walk you through in a second what we mean by that term collective authorship and how it differs from typical storytelling.

So just by way of introduction and to be respectful of those of you that were able to join on time, we'll jump in. So I'm Tyler Vawser. I'm the VP of marketing here at Apptegy. Just a little bit about me.

So I'm not just a talking head on a Zoom screen. I'm originally from the mountains of Colorado near Breckenridge, and I now live in Little Rock, Arkansas, where in about two months it's gonna be one hundred and ten degrees. And I'll be wondering why I don't still live in the mountains of Colorado. So every summer it gets me.

It's just incredibly hot here. But Little Rock's become home and we've really enjoyed living here. And this is where Apptegy is headquartered and where we started. These are my four kids.

I usually make a joke about my favorite one. So for those of you that are curious, it's currently the youngest. Her name is Lexi. Her birthday was last week.

So I make a joke, terrible joke, that I stack rank my kids each day based on the previous day's performance. So team here at Apptegy doesn't find it very funny because they're wondering if I'm doing the same thing to them. So all right.

I'll turn it over to Coty to introduce herself, and then we'll walk through some early concepts and then talk more about Saginaw ISD.

Coty Kuschinsky: All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Coty Kuschinsky.

My family, we, my husband and I don't have any children yet. So these are my fur babies. The cat's name is, Chevy or Chevrolet when he's in trouble, which is often. And then, the dog in the lower picture is Lincoln.

We're from Saginaw. So it's a very, you know, big automotive town. So that's kind of where their names came from. A little bit about me.

I started my career as a television reporter in my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan. Then I'm currently the chief of staff and communications supervisor for Saginaw ISD. And, I've been kind of spearheading the whole Our Story Collective Authorship, project from my superintendent, Dr. Jeffrey Collier, who's on this call.

So shout out to Jeff. And I look forward to speaking to you all today.

Tyler Vawser: Thanks, Coty. Well, good. So just a couple more slides. This just released today. So if you want, go ahead, like get out your phone.

You can scan this. SchoolCEO's new issue. We're going be publishing the full magazine later this week. Many of you are going to get it on your desk, the hard copy version.

But this new research we actually just published earlier this morning. And so for those of you that are in communications, those of you that are superintendents, this is really about the relationship that you have together and how you can work better from the superintendency with comms directors and from the comms director's seat, work better with the executive team. And so this is new research. We talked to over six hundred communications directors, and we're really excited to release it and really focus this whole issue on communications directors and the important role that that plays within the school district.

So if you don't ordinarily get the print edition, you can go to schoolco dot com. You can sign up for that there and you'll start receiving the next quarterly magazine when it comes out.

Alright. We also have our conference coming up this fall in September and October first. Some of you have been there before, so we're changing it up. We have all new speakers this fall, and it's gonna be here in Little Rock, Arkansas.

And it's really focused on some of what we'll talk about today, which is how do we reimagine school marketing? How does it look different to do great marketing in a school district than it might be in a private sector company? And how can it be different than what we typically think about when we're thinking about changing the way people think and feel about our schools? So I encourage you to check that out, apptegy.com/conference, or reach out to me afterwards and we can share a bit more information about that if you want to come or if you want to bring a whole team.

So what we're hoping you're gonna learn today are these four points. You can't be the only one sharing. So whether you're a superintendent, comms director, or another role, it takes more than one person to tell the story of your district.

And you also don't have to make up stories. Right? There are amazing things happening in schools every day so often and so much that we actually take for granted how many incredible moments are happening.

And those last two points are really the positive side of where we want you to go after hearing what Coty's gonna be sharing today. That you must share many stories about your school, not just one. Your district has so many stories. You need to be sharing those all the time.

Then you also need to empower many people to share those stories instead of just one person. So feel free to use the Zoom chat here. Towards the end, we should have time to do an open Q and A. But with seventy plus people on the call, it's probably gonna be a little bit easier to navigate those questions with the chat.

So feel free to leave comments and questions in the chat, and I'll kind of keep track of those and ask Coty along the way, and we might save them some of them for the end as well. So please use the chat. Use it a lot. Like, it makes it really fun and engaging when we can all ask questions there.

The last few things I'll share is we talk a lot in K-twelve about changing the narrative.

But the challenge for that is really there's so many people that are competing for the attention of our audiences, whether that's students and families or just the general public and people that are going to be voting on a millage or a bond. There's a lot of people competing for the attention of our audiences. And so what we'll walk through today is collective authorship really allows us to empower many voices to share those positive moments instead of it just getting stuck in the hands of one or two people.

Alright. Traditional marketing versus new marketing. When I think about traditional marketing, I usually think about this TV show, Mad Men. So some of you probably are fans.

You think about, like, a bunch of guys in a suit in a boardroom making decisions about how they want to kind of craft the messaging or the advertising campaign. And there's really not a whole lot of feedback. Right? They're pretty detached from the end user or the customer.

And they're just kind of sitting in their ivory tower deciding what the campaign should be. Right? But if you compare that to new marketing, like today we have influencers, we have a lot of people that sometimes they're not even getting paid. They're just sharing their firsthand experiences.

Right? That's the marketing that's really taken off now. And what we find so often is that traditional marketing doesn't resonate because new marketing is so relatable. And so as we talk about collective authorship, keep this concept in mind about traditional marketing, which looks a bit like this compared to new marketing, where we have lots of everyday people that are more similar to the audience than the person whose role it is to share the message.

And same thing with storytelling. When we think about traditional storytelling, we think about that person behind the podium and everybody's listening to them and they have their attention. But like we talked about earlier, attention is at a premium and there's a lot of people behind a microphone trying to grab all of our attention. So this doesn't work as effectively as it used to. It still can at times, but there has to be another way to really be able to gain the attention of people and also share the first hand experiences about what's happening within schools. Okay?

So one real world example from the private sector outside of schools, and then Coty's going to walk you through how Saginaw has done it. So quick question, and this will be your test to see if you're going to use the chat or not. So the pressure is on you. What do you think are the most popular websites in the world? Go ahead and drop some answers in the chat.

Google?

CNN. Google. Google. Yeah. What else other than Google? Amazon.

You guys are doing great. Amazon.

Coty's plugging her district website there. Good call. Social media. Yeah. So, like, Twitter or X, whatever we call it today.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. Yeah. Very good. So, like, you all instinctively know this. One of the really interesting things about the most popular websites is they're almost all social media.

Right? It's a website where people are actively participating, not just consuming information. So some of you are really fast. Doctor.

Rick Cobb already knows where this is going. So what's number seven? So this website, number seven, actually outranks TikTok.

Doctor. Rick Cobb is he's either seen this presentation before or he's very fast at Googling or he has a Wikipedia sense of knowledge. So Wikipedia is number seven in the world. It outranks TikTok and obviously the majority of the Internet.

Right. There's only a handful of other websites that outrank them. To give you an idea about Wikipedia, what's really amazing is Google has over sixty thousand employees. Facebook over thirty thousand.

Guess how many full time employees work at Wikipedia?

Somebody says none. Close. Less than ten? It's about two hundred.

So the number seven most popular website in the world has just over two hundred full time employees.

And so what we can learn from Wikipedia is this idea of collective authorship, which kind of seems like a nice to have, but it wouldn't really work, is actually working in a huge way and has for over twenty years. So on Wikipedia, there's over five hundred new articles a day. There's over sixty million total articles. This is out of date. And I put this together back in January and February.

What's really incredible is if you look at the New York Times archive, they only have about fifteen million articles and it dates back to eighteen fifty. So Wikipedia came out in two thousand and three and has already completely blown that out of the water.

There's over two edits every second. There's over a billion page edits. And there's over one hundred and nineteen thousand active volunteer contributors.

There's a really interesting interview with some of the folks that are volunteer contributors at Wikipedia where they say, in theory, this shouldn't work. But in practice, it is. So as we talked about collective authorship today, and as you hear Coty talk about what they're doing, you might be tempted to think, that sounds nice, but or in theory, that could work, but in practice, it doesn't. But Wikipedia is an incredible example about how this can actually be done at scale. And Saginaw and their Our Story initiative is about how it can be done within a school district.

Last couple of slides I'll share here. Wikipedia. This is just the English site, so not other languages. And what you'll see here is that for every editor, there's about twenty three thousand unique devices accessing content.

Right? So this is the power of a single person being able to really influence a lot of different people because they have firsthand experience. So what Wikipedia has done is they're not requiring you to show your title or your position, your PhD. Instead, they're valuing firsthand experience and knowledge.

Right? And it gives everybody the opportunity to share their voice. Now, that can sound chaotic, right? If everybody's sharing their voice, how in the world is it accurate?

And researchers have actually tested this, where they'll purposefully go into Wikipedia pages and they'll add misinformation, falsehoods, or out of date content. And within three hours, all of those errors or purposeful errors have been fixed.

Which is quite incredible when you think about it. And one of the things that we see is because there's so much value on firsthand experience, the people that have the most lived firsthand experience are the most likely to stay up to date and keep updating it. And so it creates this natural ability to have a check and balance. Okay?

So this to me is just one of the most incredible examples. It's wild that it's number seven and it's wild that it works at all. And yet it's highly effective. And if you've ever followed, like, a big sports game on Wikipedia, it's literally being updated by the second by volunteers, by people that don't get paid to do it.

But it's firsthand experience. It's something that they're passionate about and they're sharing that out. So with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to turn things over to Coty Kuschinsky, who's the Chief of Staff at Saginaw ISD.

Coty Kuschinsky: All right. Thank you, Tyler. Appreciate it. Let me make sure I'm sharing the right stuff and going full screen for everybody.

All right.

So, we're going to talk about our story today. Tyler did such a great job of kind of prefacing, the thought behind why our story works. And I think that Wikipedia example is just a perfect real world example that we've all, come to know and love.

So I'm going to start first with talking about the bottleneck effect, which is actually a biology term. For those of you that don't know, I am married to a science teacher at one of our local school districts that we serve here in Saginaw County. And so he'll talk to me about, you know, aliens and the eclipse was a big deal. And we were talking about the bottleneck effect.

And I said, wow, that really sounds like what we're experiencing with school communication. So what it really means is that we have an original population. So if we're talking about rhinos, whatever kind of, you know, animal you want to discuss, and then an event happened. So with the dinosaurs, for example, it was the asteroid.

And then what was the surviving population after that? And when he was talking to me about this and how he was describing it to his students, I thought that really kind of describes what's happening in school communication with all the stories that we have to tell. So I created this graphic because it's a little bit easier to, visualize. And so this top up here is all the stories that school districts like your own back at home have.

Because really one of my key points is that school districts are content machines. When I was a television reporter, I mean, we could have just stayed at one district all day and not told all the stories that are happening in the district. But then there's barriers to storytelling. So whether that's access to how to story tell, if you only have one school, communicator or professional, not at all, just the superintendent, restricting access in some cases, that is the barrier.

So that's the actual bottleneck. And then these are the stories that get told. And that's not an accurate description of what's going on in school districts.

So what I like to do is do a quick Google search. We were talking about Google earlier about what is actually escaping the bottleneck effect. So let me escape really quick from my full screen view here.

And I'm going to do a quick Google search of teacher.

And then we're going to go to the news.

So this is a live search. You guys are seeing it in real time. So police Lancaster County student bites off teachers some, not great. Chicago Teachers Union laws failing community school wants one hundred and eighty more. I am not the problem. Ann Arbor teachers ask district to avoid layoffs of a twenty five million dollars shortfall.

Trans teachers expressing their gender in Texas. We can talk about Texas in a whole another case probably.

Mastery Charter is boosting starting pay for beginning teachers to sixty thousand. Maybe that's good in some cases. So we could keep going. These aren't really the stories that are actually happening in any of our districts.

I hope not. This is not the everyday stories. It's not the stories about your preschoolers learning how to tie their shoes, or Jimmy learning how to, read and he's struggling with dyslexia. These aren't the actual real depictions of what's going on in our districts.

So how do we tell more stories that are actually realistic to what's going on in our buildings when we're one person? So whether that's you are a comms director, a supervisor, a principal, or a superintendent, somebody is probably wearing that hat.

So that's how collective authorship was born. So we often use the term Our Story because that is like the branded initiative of collective authorship here at Saginaw ISD, and it's the solution to storytelling barriers by empowering every single staff member to have moderated access to our content management application by using ThrillShare.

So these are some of the stories that were being lost before we implemented the Our Story initiative. They were dying in our staff members' phones. We know that they're already taking these pictures because you're probably seeing it on their own personal Facebook pages. And so we said this content is already happening, it's already being captured, how can we harness that and use it for our district's platform?

So this is an example, one of our teachers or excuse me, it was a principal at one of our buildings, noticed that one of their teachers were having their students make little NICU hats for a local hospital and took a picture of it and posted it. And that alone garnered over six forty, reactions to that post, and it was just a rockstar post for a very long time for us. It just kept getting interactions.

Now is the post perfect? Probably not. We could have probably wrote more about it or not had a black border around the image or something like that. But did that matter to anybody? No, the story was still being told. So what we did here was we supported them in reducing barriers to storytelling. So instead of taking this photo that they were gonna take anyways and putting it on their own social media sites, we were harnessing and empowering them to share it through our sites.

So our story was launched, officially in the format that it is today in January of twenty twenty three. And we've had over, one hundred and sixty authors, so different staff members that are participating and the stories that we've told, since then have been over two thousand four hundred. And we track those on a monthly basis.

So what does that mean? What does two thousand something stories mean? That's kind of a big number. What does it actually mean in comparison maybe to other districts of our size?

So in the past, twenty eight days, we've done one hundred and four posts. And then I actually benchmark and track districts that are similar to my size on, Facebook using the business suite. And they average about thirty six posts in those same twenty eight day periods. On the low end, someone posted thirteen times in that month.

And on, the high end, they posted about eighty four.

And then so how do we give people access Our Story? How are we launching this? How are we letting staff members know, hey, you have access to this, let's participate. So what I did is I built an Our Story webpage, and this is just a screenshot of my homepage. And as you can see up top here, we had a quick link to rStory and it's actually under staff quick links as well. And it was just a one stop shop for rStory to explain how to do it. There's actually a training video, a frequently asked questions page, anything that our staff member might need where I'm not super available for that, like, immediate response, they can go here and they can start telling stories within five minutes.

And then this is the page.

Again, the training video, step by step directions in case they don't want to watch a video, it's only eight steps. Frequently asked questions, have been, kind of consolidated over the past year of what keeps being asked of me or what are some folks may be confused about, some resources of how they can tell better stories, and then our training program, which I'll go into in just a moment.

Tyler Vawser: One thing I'll add here is what's really smart about what Saginaw has done is just branded it, Right? By branding an initiative and a concept, it one, makes it easier to talk about, but it also makes it easier for someone who has questions to want to get involved. Right? Most schools are trying to get more stories told.

They're trying to involve more people. But it's not branded. Right? There's no name. There's no phrase.

It's not really defined. And so by defining it, it actually makes it easier for it to travel both word-of-mouth but also to a web page in something like this. Right? So chances are you have something like this.

The question is, have you branded it and how clear is the brand around that initiative? And how do we make that really clear so that more people can get involved in that process?

Coty Kuschinsky: And Tyler, I really appreciate you bringing that up because, you know, we've just been working in this space for so long that I forget that it's not common knowledge, but I do think it definitely helps branding it because then folks can call it something. It's not just, oh, I have access to that Thrillshare thing or saying collective authorship. The Our Story umbrella is just much more encompassing of the initiative that we're trying to get across. So yeah, definitely. So this is, a five minute training video of just some screen shares of, or screen recording, excuse me, of how to use, ThrillShare. So a lot of this, if your users will be familiar to you, but I wanted you to actually go through this quick five minute process so you actually understand and experience what our staff is going through if they're at their desk trying to participate in our story.

Video audio: Hi everyone, welcome to our story one hundred one, which is a positive storytelling training for Saginaw Intermediate School District team members. This course is your first step to becoming a brand ambassador for Saginaw ISD. This entry level course will onboard you to our ThrillShare platform and teach you how to make your first of many positive storytelling posts.

We will also be covering how to nominate your team members for orange spot recognitions. After the course, you will demonstrate your first post to earn your bronze badge that is industry recognized by Credly.

Okay, let's get started! First, you will need to download the ThrillShare from your app store using your smart device. You may also use your desktop by visiting www dot thrillshare dot com.

For this training, we will be demonstrating both the desktop and app versions so you can use what's best for you.

Users might find the app version easier while you're out and about capturing all the positive stories that happen at Saginaw ISD.

For logging in, will use your Saginaw ISD email and password or click the Sign in with Google button. You will most likely see a two factor authentication at this point. Once you're logged in you will need to upload a photo for your profile picture, which is only available to do on your desktop. This picture only shows on the Live Feed section which is demonstrated here on our website.

Click the gray icon in the upper right corner of your screen and then click the little pencil right next to your name to edit. This is where you upload your photo and then press save changes. Next, you will scroll down to Profiles and click the same gray pencil and repeat the process and click Save Changes. Now we are ready to make a post!

To start your first positive storytelling post, we will need you to head to the Media section of your menu and click Live Feed if you're on the desktop or just Live Feed if you're on the app version. Once you're on the Live Feed, you can start creating your post by typing in the message box or clicking the red plus sign on the app version. For desktop, can go ahead and start, but for the app you'll need to click Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Live Feed until they are all purple.

To write your post, make sure you're answering the who, what, when, where, and why questions. For this example, we will be using the positive story of Millet and Transition Center students enjoying Valentine's Day. In the message, I would write, Millet and Transition Center students had a blast today creating Valentine's Day crafts and enjoyed a special dance with fantastic music. SaginawISD OurStory We will be covering hashtag use in a different training within the program, but these two are a great starting point. It is important to note that Twitter only accepts two eighty characters for their messages, so we will stick to keeping it short and sweet while using full sentences.

Lastly, make sure you write your message in third person because you are representing the ISD on social media. As an example, if I were to make a post about myself, I would say Chief of Staff Coty Kuschinsky enjoyed training the Millet Learning Center team today instead of I enjoyed training the Millet Learning Center team today. There is a lot of us at Saginaw ISD and our audience needs to know who we are.

After the message is complete, check it over one more time for spelling errors and grammar. But don't get too caught up in this! Your posts are always moderated and approved before going anywhere! Now let's maybe get to the best part the photos!

On your mobile device you will click the small picture icon or on the desktop you will click upload an image. This will send you to your photo album on your device or your downloads folder on your desktop. You can then choose up to ten photos you would like to post. Once your photos are uploaded, you will have to choose an alternate text for each one.

This is a part of the Americans with Disabilities Act and keeps our posts accessible to everyone in our community. So for each photo I will make a summary for the alternate text and press Save to Post. You may also choose a filter category that helps organize your post a little better on our website. For this example, I will choose Millett Learning Center and Transition Center because that is the subject of my post.

Once that is done, you're ready to press publish. This then goes to a moderator to double check, which can be edited if needed and then approved.

If you'd like to schedule a post to go out later in the week, you are more than welcome to use the schedule feature, which allows you to choose the date and time that your message will be posted and you're done! If you would like to nominate someone for an orange spot recognition, you will have to use this same process, but just use orange somewhere in the message so we can find it! There are examples on the orange spot page of our website that gives you a quick and easy template if you need some inspiration. We will be pulling these nominations on a monthly basis straight from ThrillShare to choose our winner!

If you have any more questions on this training, feel free to reach out to Chief of Staff Coty Kuschinsky at ckuschinsky@sisd.cc or visit our Frequently Asked section of the Our page. To gain your Bronze Badge, please demonstrate your first post and then click on the Bronze Badge form button and you will be sent an email with directions on how to use it and continue the Brand Ambassador training program. Thanks for watching and we can't wait to see your positive stories!

Coty Kuschinsky: All right, let's try and skip

Tyler Vawser: You're a full time video editor, too, right?

So wearing many hats.

Coty Kuschinsky: Yes. Look, my broadcasting bachelor's degree has been nice for this for sure.

I think I am stuck. Hold on here, folks.

Yeah, escape really quick. Impress.

Tyler Vawser: So one of the new questions that was just asked by Natalie was about if you created that or if Apptegy helped. So I wish we could say we helped. Coty and Saginaw went and created these on their own, and we actually found out about it afterwards, which is really, really cool. So, we probably should be helping schools with this. So if that's something that you want help with, let us know and we can definitely talk about it.

Coty Kuschinsky: Good question.

And there were some questions in the chat as well that I have slides for coming up. So these are just some examples if you want to kind of compare of who would be storytellers in my district.

Amy Kohner is from our teacher at our Millet Learning Center, which is our high needs populations here in, Saginaw ISD. So if you're wondering on how do I tell special education stories, here's some great examples for you. Heidi is from our, preschool department and she's talking about Murphy Farm Preschool and they had, I think they were celebrating Doctor. Seuss's birthday here.

This is also one of our preschool locations. Heather Weaver is also a teacher, so they were doing a box sculpture. I would have had no idea that this was happening because our Caleder preschool is on the whole other side of town, twenty five plus minutes away. So that's another good point.

I could not be there and would have no idea that that happened that day. So that's really great that Heather took the initiative and posted that. Julie Klaus is our assistant principal at Millett Learning Center. They do a most improved, turnaround award.

And so she posted that of one of her students. So very student driven.

But we also do, you know, staff highlights, which has been great because it's more likely that a coworker knows about the great things that are happening with their other coworkers. So this was one of our, speech therapists that she had a recognition from one of the, districts that we serve.

So, why does our story work for school communicators like our myself? It increases our capacity so we can go out and do other things. So half of my title is chief of staff. And so I can do more leadership things because I have time and I'm not running around with like a chicken with my head cut off trying to capture all the great things because that's impossible.

And it allows us to shift into leadership roles. Like I said, Trent Allen, APR is the NSPRA, the National School of Public Relations Association president. And he has an idea that I like to bring up that's called consult and release. So it allows us to consult folks and be that expert in those rooms and those conversations around school communicators, but we're not actually being the boots on the ground. And then we release the content. So I really liked he brought that up at our Michigan School Public Relations Association conference, and I just really liked that term.

And then it puts positive capital back into the bank. So when bad news inevitably does happen, it's a little less bad because people are understanding that our brand is more positive and that positive things are happening at our district. It also gives us a better relationship with the media. So they're more likely to give you a call because you're pushing out the good stuff and then they can go a little bit deeper after that social media post. And it increases transparency with the community, prospective families, your board. They kind of understand what you're doing on the day to day basis instead of those big stories that are the only ones going out from those bottlenecks of, you know, teacher of the year or some kind of grant that you might have had. Those two aren't like the only things that we do at our districts.

And then overall, have better and more rich content. So the example I showed on the last slide are stories that come out every single day and they're very, you know, student, centered, very staff centered, and it's just more rich. People are happy. They're smiling. That's the truth of our district.

So why does our story work for superintendents? It increases the school communicators capacity so we're able to do other things for our superintendents. We can help them with their communications needs as well.

It also provides more diverse stories and representation of our district. So instead of it only coming from superintendent stories or leadership stories or your cabinet level or just your principals, you're getting those stories from bus drivers and parapros as well.

You're getting more buy in from staff at your district. They're kind of understanding what you do at your district more, what you're doing at your building more, and they are all in. It really does change positive staff culture and climate, because they know that there's other good things. They're not kind of wrapped up into their own world if they're having a negative week and they took a take a look at what their coworkers are up to, it kind of shifts their perspective a little bit. And so that's been really nice and they can celebrate each other, which has been awesome.

Back to that positive capital piece, when bad things inevitably happen, we have a piggy bank full of positive stories to pull from.

And with attraction and retention, we've really experienced folks wanting to come to Saginaw ISD and asking, is this real? What am I seeing on social media? There's hundreds, thousands of posts going out. Is that really everyone's experiences? And so we have some data to support that. We have, zero vacancies in our admin non bargaining group of professional staff retention, in the last year. So we're at one hundred percent with that.

We also have more positive public relations and it helps build our brand around positivity. And then there's some staff accountability with that. If they ask, hey, why wasn't I celebrated for getting that certificate? There's some accountability of where your neighbor has training for our story and they can celebrate you. And so let's have a conversation about culture and climate in your specific smaller group.

So why does Our Story work for the rest of our staff? They feel a better sense of belonging and representation that they feel very seen, especially with groups like our parapros that don't feel seen very often in the hard work that they do in the classroom. They feel very much more seen not only by the superintendent or their other coworkers, but by the community and our audience as a whole. They have ownership over the district's narrative.

They feel seen and heard. Like I said, they have the ability to celebrate their own wins. Sometimes it's a little cringey. I'm getting my master's degree soon and that that might be weird that I have to post, you know, that I have my master's degree, but then I trust my coworkers that they might celebrate me anyways.

So that's kind of nice. It's like a good relationship between the two. And then you have a closer relationship with your coworkers and leadership. Dr. Collier, my superintendent's on the call.

I think he has a much more better, well rounded understanding of what our six fifty plus staff members are doing every day because he's keeping up with them on live feed. In addition to all the other ways he's connecting with them, that's one that he can do, you know, before he goes to sleep. Think he tells me he looks through live feed and so he's able to kind of get an update about what everyone's doing.

Our staff is also getting an increased understanding of the district goals and brands because they're more tuned in of what's going on. They love the instant gratification when their post gets approved within, you know, twenty to thirty minutes or however long it takes me to get to them. They just love being able to see it go right directly to Facebook. So that's been great.

And then they become better advocates and influencers to join our team. So when we're talking about attraction and retention, they're able to tell our story a little bit better. And then when they have friends or someone interested in joining our team or, hey, I'm so happy in my workplace, we can just have them be influencers and, you know, get those folks, hey, is our join our team page. Here's the application. Let's get you on board. So that's been really cool.

Tyler Vawser: One thing I'll add that second to last point about instant gratification. Coty talked about the bottleneck effect. The way that I like to think about it is that game of telephone that my kids play and most kids at schools play where somebody gets a message and it gets passed along around the room until it makes its way back to the front. And by the time it's gone through ten, fifteen or twenty people, it's completely ridiculous.

It doesn't sound anything like what we originally said. And so that is kind of how we've done a lot of school communications. Right? Where it has to go through five, ten, fifteen people before it gets to the website.

And that may be okay. But that takes time. Right? And so someone that's really excited about what happened today, it could be a week until they actually see that approved and put on the website if they don't have something like what Saginaw has created.

Right? So what's just so smart and so intuitive is that people want to celebrate their wins in the moment. And people who are watching, people who are receiving that content, they're going to feel more connected to it if it's something that happened earlier today or happened the same day versus a week later or two weeks later.

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. And I think people just love to see their families interact with their content. They'll go back to Facebook and check the comments and then they start. I mean, we've got sixty plus comments in some case of people just going back and forth and chatting, after they, you know, press publish on that. So that's been very cool.

But I could speak to this all day. I did record some staff's, opinions on our story. So I just wanted to share that with you so you can kind of get some direct feedback of those users.

Video audio: In my past experiences with, you know, with sharing stories has always come from the administrators, the top level. And I think, with the training, all of us have the opportunity. And so even people that might not be in a leadership position, they're able to share their stories, to share their perspective. For example, over the summer, the bus depot was open and all the bus drivers, they were out there, they were showcasing their buses, and, you know, we've had pictures of people in the lunchrooms that are showing, you know, what's going on.

So I I think it it gives everybody importance and it shows them that they are a part of the organization. They are important. You know, your title doesn't determine whether you're important or not. It's it's you as a person and the value you bring that determines how important you are.

And I think that Apptegy and Thrillshare does that.

Every time I put something up there, I'm always watching it too and watching those numbers go up. I think the most exciting thing for me is when I see parents on there and they're tagging each other and they're commenting because when they see their child, they get excited.

Well, was hired as a professional and it feels really nice to be treated like a professional. I work a lot with parapros and professionals in their title and I love that we have given them the opportunity to post if they would like to. Treating educators as professionals it feels, just feels nice.

I enjoy like when I'm scrolling through Facebook or whatever, like seeing stories from my teacher friends because I don't see them throughout the day, so I don't know what they're doing. So it's cool to see things in our building that I wouldn't get to see normally.

I think with, Apptegy, with the thrillshare, I think, we're able to create our own story. We're able to capture moments that maybe a photographer might not be available to catch. I think from a DEI standpoint that's very important because we get to, see everybody's perspective, about what's going on, all the wonderful things that are going on at the ISD. It builds our culture. This is what we are. We share our story. In my past experiences with

Coty Kuschinsky: Sorry folks.

So I did not pay them for those great sound bites. They just, you know, happen that way. So that's nice.

So these next few slides are going to be those frequently asked questions that I received from school communicators. So we're just gonna address them right away. And then, hopefully at the end, if you have any more questions after this point, we can chat about it. So the first thing I always get from school communicators because they're really concerned about engagement.

Well, if you're pushing out that much content, there's no way people are actually interacting with it or seeing it because we all know that our social media algorithms are a fun thing to deal with. So, I took this quick screenshot of, our data from Meta Business Suite. And I did want to add that we do ads for some of our, you know, open positions so that there is that, from organic and from ad section there for you to take a look at, but we've increased our reach, organically a hundred percent, by two hundred and twenty two thousand plus. And then our Facebook visits have increased by almost three hundred thousand percent.

And then our Facebook follows have increased by seven hundred and nineteen.

And I chose Facebook because that's really where most of our parents are at the data shows. So I just chose that because that's a little bit, better to wrap your head around. So, what about FERPA? That's a big one that's, always asked of me.

And so this is my response. We trust our professional staff to be professionals. They went through school longer than me to do what they've got to do. They've been in this game longer than me to do what they've got to do.

So I trust them, as professionals to understand FERPA and understand which students have, you know, the opt in or opt out media forms. And they know their students better than I do. So in other forms of collective authorship that I've seen, you might enter a story through, you know, texting your school communicator or texting whoever that might be or a Google form to enter a story, which again takes weeks to be approved. And then that school communicator has to say, well, who is this Johnny Smith?

And does he have a media opt in or opt out? And then they get bogged down with hunting down who that is, whereas you know their faces and their names. And so then I have some recommendations as well that I think have worked well for Saginaw ISD. We support authors and taking photos of maybe back of the heads or, close-up of hands or at the back of the room or from far away to not, show identities.

That's a good way to get around that. We also just recommend double checking. If you do have to pause and wait and get back to your, student information system to double check those things, go for it.

And then I also highly recommend moving your district to an opt out media release instead of them having to opt in every single time. You're less likely to get a large response of opting out if you move to that opt out media release form.

And then there's a question about sharing our opt out form. So Ryan, our opt out forms are actually different for every single building. So that it kind of just depends because we mostly deal with special education.

But I'm more than happy to share some examples with you after this.

So what about moderation? There was a question in the chat from Becca asking how much time does it take? Do I do this weekly? All that stuff.

So, I use the ThrillShare app on my phone, to do a lot of approvals because if I'm out and about at meetings or anything like that, but if I have a day where I'm at my desk, I'm using ThrillShare, on my desktop, and I'm approving about five posts per day. So there is not a day that goes by that, I'm not checking. So, you do get a notification from ThrillShares through, email when someone does post, so you can do it that way as well where you get the notification and go back in and approve. But I kind of just always have that tab up and I'm just refreshing.

And I'm working within ThrillShare with doing web design type stuff anyway. So it's just always up for me. Something to help me though, some tools. Let's talk about AI.

I use Grammarly, and I use Grammarly on the desktop and on my phone. So you can actually do the Grammarly Professional, which is the screenshot here on your screen. And it will run through Grammarly to double check. I can't get bogged down with does that need a comma or all that good stuff all day. So Grammarly has been, a lifesaver when it comes to that. And it just checks things when I'm either moving quickly or it's a long day or whatever that might be. It's nice to have my eyes and then a robot on it as well.

And then I use ChatGPT a lot too. So if something is just like not working where this wording is weird, it just sounds really stumbly and awkward, I'll push it through ChatGPT, but, you know, ask it to keep the same, thought or concept, but just make the flow a little bit better. And then it will give me a better version without changing the voice of the author too much. So with this moderation, our staff absolutely love it.

It's a safety net for them where they don't have to get so bogged down with this is not perfect. I'm not sure. I have a great relationship with them now where it's like Coty's got it. I don't know how many text messages I have received where they're like, Hey, I spelled like five things wrong on that.

I I know you got me, but I just wanted to let you know that I saw it. And so we have great relationships like that now where I just take care of it for them and they know that I'm there for them. And if something goes through moderation, we can always go back on Facebook directly or on the edit button and get that swapped out.

Tyler Vawser: That's a really important point, right, is that you're going to want more people to be authors and get engaged with this. But a lot of times they doubt their own ability to do it. Right. So they're going to think, well, that's what communications professionals do or that's what the superintendent does.

I'm not an expert. And so this is a way to encourage them to share that firsthand experience, but also take away that doubt of like, well, what if it reflects poorly on me? They know that somebody else is going to be involved, make them look good. But we still keep the power of the first hand experience instead of playing that game of telephone.

Coty Kuschinsky: Absolutely. Yeah, if we had to play that all day, we would never get that done, for sure.

Tyler Vawser: Coty, how often are you when you're moderating? It's maybe more than a comma, right? Maybe something's a little bit off brand or it's not the way that you would put it. Right? Are you having a conversation with that person if it's, you know, more than a couple of edits? And like, what does that look like?

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah, great question. That is super rare where I have to change completely everything where it's just a hot mess and it's just not going to work. That's super rare. I don't, I can't even like think of an example in my head right now where that's happened.

Mostly it's that first person thing, like people will say, I or me and something and like who is I or me. That's probably the main thing that I edit. If I had to put a bet on that, that would probably be my number one thing that I change, which is no problem because I know who it came from. So I know their their name and their title, and I can just swap it out really quick. That's pretty much Yeah.

Then, another thing, if I had to pick a number two is the acronym use. We all know that that's wild. And we have so many acronyms. So I will put what that acronym means just so our audience understands it a little bit more. And that was an early comment I got on our Facebook of like, what's that mean? Or it was, you know, one of our letter groups. So, I just try to make a habit out of that.

But yeah. So what else can you do with our story? Some folks asked about badging in the, chat. So I'll talk about that now.

So this is our silver level certified badge once you hit fifty stories. So this is by Credly, like you saw in the video, and folks put this in their email signature on LinkedIn. They can share it on any of their socials and then Credly collects that data for me. So I know how often people are sharing it, if you need to use that data for anything at all.

And then, yeah, I just keep them up to date and the data that Apptegy gives me from, you know, how many people post a month and all that, I'm able to keep track of that. And my amazing deputy superintendent Scott Swart helps me with the Excel sheet because we all know school communicators are not the best with numbers. So he helps me out with that.

Tyler Vawser: And Coty had shared in the chat, too, that, you know, these are in the email signatures. People are asking about it. Again, another really smart reason to brand an initiative like this is because you can create graphics and people can ask questions and it looks really sharp as well.

Coty Kuschinsky: Thank you.

So the next part of is, I provide training to staff that request it or if I'm noticing like this would really help them. So partnering with HR has been awesome for our story because they are really obviously dealing with attraction and retention issues like most of their districts in the country. So I was able to help them out with some Canva templates of, you know, some just common posts, our early childhood department. They can swap out, you know, those bullet points of who we're hiring for.

And then they did that whole caption by themselves. And I just, you know, approve it when they need it instead of them requesting me to post. They don't have to do that. They can just do it on their own so that we're not going that back and forth.

And like, it doesn't get out until two later. And then you already did interviews by that point.

And then our HR is also doing a happy work anniversary. I don't even have access in Skyward and our student information system to know when people's anniversaries are and all that good stuff. So just let HR do it. They know they have access.

No need to train me on a whole new system. So they just take care of it. And, I didn't even make this template for them on Canva. They just kind of took care of it and did it on their own and I love it.

So it's been great.

And then we also run our employee of the month, program using OurStory. So at first, and it's called the orange spot recognition because we have this cute little mascot or orange frog, named Spark.

And, so our orange spot recognition is once a month. And what we were doing is a Google form, which again goes back to, you know, how other people are participating in collective authorship. And the Google form would have like forty nominations for staff seeing other staff do great things. And those thirty nine nominations weren't going anywhere.

They were just getting caught in an Excel sheet and never going externally. And so those thirty nine people that did really awesome, good things were not being recognized in any way, shape or form because they didn't know they were even nominated. So what we did, and Doctor. Colley, my superintendent challenged us to kind of rethink how this works.

We already have our story built. Let's have nominations go through ThrillShare and our story. And so our staff can recognize each other publicly, and then we'll pull from that list and pick a winner and then do a larger celebration for whoever the winner is. But they still, all the people that were nominated are still celebrated publicly.

So that was big, transition, easy to do because we already had the system set up, but this has just been so I can't speak highly enough to how much this has changed, how we recognize our staff. It's just been, a great addition for sure.

So, what's next for our story? We are advancing our digital badges. So just kind of hitting harder with those, celebrating folks for when they hit milestones using game theory of you hit fifty, you hit seventy five, looking at the data of where people have gaps in their posting. Maybe they always post once a month, but we're not really getting twice a month folks and really hitting hard with that and giving them some incentives to post.

But to answer a question that was in the chat publicly, this is not mandated. It's a completely voluntary process. So we want it to be grassroots and grow on its own. We're not going to give somebody a number of you have to post four times a month because that would just be inauthentic in the very exact opposite of what the Our Story, initiative stands for.

So we're advancing those digital badges and then, we're adding student voices by partnering with our CTE programs. So we're going to start with our career complex in our, Great Lakes Bay Early College and get some students to post their experiences and their programs and using ThrillShare just the same. And then Claire Gladwin, RISD, who is about an hour away from us, launched our story in February of twenty twenty four. And I created that same training video for them using their branding and all that good stuff. And this is a screenshot of their homepage. So we're very excited to see how they're doing. I check on them, you know, once a week to kind of see who's posting and it's just been really exciting to watch that grow at a different organization.

So my challenge to the group, before I start answering some, more questions, back to Tyler's original point, let's talk about traditional marketing versus, what that can look like now today. And is it working for us in the original format?

And I really challenged the group to be vulnerable in sharing your authorship. That control is gonna really restrict, your storytelling and feeling that it has to be perfect or that you have to go and get the content yourself with your beautiful digital camera. I would just really challenge back to the group is your purpose to be perfect or to storytell? And are you being a bottleneck?

And that's all I have for you today.

Tyler Vawser: Cool. Well, let's do some questions and go ahead and drop questions in the chat. We'll go back to those that we didn't answer yet. But if you have questions, go ahead and keep leaving those.

One thing that I think is really exciting, and I want to share my screen real quick. Let's see. The definition that Saginaw had given me about collective authorship was this one. So empowering every staff member at Saginaw ISD to share one positive moment a day to tell our story.

Now, what's interesting about this definition is that this is not happening yet. Right? Like, Coty, is every single staff member sharing one positive moment a day?

Coty Kuschinsky: No, we would break the Internet. But that's a problem that we are willing to step up to the plate with for sure.

Tyler Vawser: Right. And I think the important the reason I bring this up is that you can have lofty aspirations like Saginaw does and not meet it, but still a lot of good can come from it. Right? I think what they're doing is they're building a culture around storytelling and empowering everybody eventually to be able to tell those stories. Right? But to get to everybody, you have to start somewhere. And so with over one hundred and fifty authors, right, it's not how many students are at Saginaw?

Coty Kuschinsky: We serve twenty six thousand in our county, but, students that we actually have underneath of our umbrella, it's probably under, you know, two thousand, one thousand, I would say. Exactly. Going to set up a little bit differently, but a lot of staff members, a lot of students total that are served.

Tyler Vawser: Right. And so my challenge to everyone to add to what Coty said is like, don't think about if you can do this perfectly. Right? Think about how you get started and add maybe five new authors to the story of your districts this month. And then how do you add five more the next month and so on?

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah. And I've seen versions of that, Tyler, to point in my, school communicators group of folks doing like little influencers at their at their buildings. And what I will caution you with, with that, especially if you're just like thinking of just principles or just that rockstar teacher at your, middle school is that people will start if they're at an event or in the building, they will start saying Mrs. Smith is responsible for that.

And so they don't feel that collective authorship or that empowerment to tell their own story. And Mrs. Smith compared to Mrs. Jones have two completely different experiences and they are catching thousands of different stories.

And so that's just human nature that we've seen. And we've struggled with that even at Saginaw ISD a little bit where I'll be at an event and they'll say, oh, well, Coty's got it. I'm like, no, you got it. So you just really I would just challenge the group to kind of think about that when you just open up the flood gates and allow everybody to, then it's everybody's collective lift instead of just an identified person.

That's just kind of something we've noticed, and that's probably just human nature, some kind of psychology study we could do. I did want to

Tyler Vawser: Can you answer this question from Kevin?

He said, did you run into any workload issues or teacher contract issues?

And how did you handle those conversations? Think you've touched on it, but I'd like to hear a direct answer on it too.

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah, definitely. So we don't because it's not a mandate or requirement. So we're not saying you have to do, five to ten stories a month or you have to do the system or you're accountable to posting this. It's just that's not our culture surrounding our story.

We've never said that anywhere. We would never do that. That would be against what the Our Story mission is. So, we have not had a problem with it at all.

I've never heard even whispers of that being an issue. So, no.

Tyler Vawser: I think you answered kind of how much time this takes you to do it, right? It seems like you're able to do it on the go and on the move, and it doesn't require three hours of uninterrupted time each day or anything like that. You want to talk more about your workflow?

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah. And even if like, let's say some days we'll be busy because we'll have like a super large event or something like that. And so I'll get maybe six, ten, twelve posts come through in a day instead of my average of five. And you just kind of like knock them out throughout the hour and get them out and get them approved and get them posted.

So I never have to sit there and, bogged down and like, schedule three hours on my Google calendar or anything like that. That's not been the case. And again, I'm just using ThrillShare so often with my other work duties that I'm just always on it. So it hasn't really been an issue, in that case.

And using Grammarly has definitely been a game changer for me where I don't have to sit there and get bogged down myself with editing. Using AI to its advantages has been nice.

Tyler Vawser: What about rolling this out to teachers and staff? Do you, like at the beginning of the year, make a big announcement? Is it part of like a regular workflow? Like how do people find out about this other than word-of-mouth or the email signatures?

Coty Kuschinsky: Yeah. So those are two ways that are very like grassroots of people, you know, taking some initiative on their own if they're interested, to do it, but more of the traditional, like in person type trainings. We do an employee welcome, which is kind of like our, you know, initiation to new staff members. And they do a training.

We do that quarterly now where we used to do it only once a year. So sometimes we wouldn't see a new staff member until they had already been with us for eleven months, which is not ideal. So, we changed that whole process and construct to do it quarterly so that we're meeting them earlier and then they go through our story training there. But what has really been the game changer is creating that our story homepage so that that link can just be sent out to whoever needs it.

So they are even sent that link before they go to employee welcome so that they can pre train themselves. And then they have practice throughout that. We also have it being brought up during, you know, smaller departmental meetings by other, you know, staff members and leaders that they can, bring it up because that's a culture and climate, initiative to them that they want to increase our story usage in their department, they can do that. That's a tool that we've created for them, for free and they can, you know, lead that on.

And then lastly, we do an orange thought recognition, or excuse me, orange frog training, which is our positive psychology initiative here at Saginaw ISD. And so we meet about forty different staff members quarterly as well. So we hit them again then.

And then I would say we just like any email that's sent out by the superintendent's office always has it linked. So we'll celebrate some stories being told in our superintendent newsletter, and that's linked in there.

We do it on social media often. Like if we're referencing our story, we'll shoot the link in there. So it's kind of just always being talked about. I hope that answers that.

Tyler Vawser: Yeah. There's a new question that says, do we have to worry about FERPA if it's staff centered content? So not students, but staff.

Coty Kuschinsky: So as part of our staff employment, they're expected that images might be taken of them. But of course, if you have a specific situation where a staff member might have domestic violence issue or something like that, they know to come to HR and we can talk through that. But they kind of know or understand when pictures are being taken of them and things like that. So, it's never been an issue, but I would just, if that's a concern for you, if you have a large, you know, staff group that that might come up is just to say, kind of look at your either board policies or your onboarding, excuse me, protocols with that and kind of take a look at your language surrounding it. We just have not had an issue in that. It's just an expected part of their employment.

Tyler Vawser: One thing that I saw over and over again in the presentation, you mentioned it a minute ago, was the positive psychology, the orange frog thing. And that's a different webinar.

Maybe we'll do that some other time.

But one thing I think that's really important about that mixed with Collective authorship is Saginaw is training their team, their staff to look for the positive. Right? So instead of looking for the negative, which we're all very good at, right? It's actually retraining us to find the positive moments which are kind of, you know, there.

We're just sometimes we just walk right by them. Right? And so by encouraging other people to find those moments and then sharing them, it gives everybody even someone who is not an author better eyes to see what's happening in the district every single day. Right?

And I think that's such an important thing. And then something that Dr. Collier and Coty and I have talked about is really connecting these stories to district goals too. So it's not just stories because it's nice.

Right? It's stories that make recruiting teachers and staff easier. Right? It makes it easier for families to enroll because they see the great things that are happening.

Right? And so as you think about what an Our Story initiative might look like in your district, you also want to encourage teachers and staff that want to participate to understand that it's more than a nice to have. It's something that really drives the key parts of your district from student engagement and enrollment to teacher recruitment and retention. Right?

Even down to just engagement with the larger community who doesn't always get to see what's happening within the walls of your district. Right. So to them, the website might be the only opportunity that they have to hear about a positive moment or on Facebook. Right.

And so if they don't get that chance to walk through the front doors every day, how do we make it easier for them to hear about those positive moments?

Coty Kuschinsky: We're hoping with the two thousand four hundred stories that they have a better feeling about what our district, not just like brand with colors and all that. I'm saying brand of feeling of when you walk through our doors, what kind of welcoming environment we are, what kind of staff or customer service are you to expect when you visit Saginaw ISD. So that's been really important to us. And I think that the storytelling has shown a better picture, of of who we are for sure.

I'm gonna ask, how do you go about employee nomination using Google forms? So no, our employee, nomination for the, employee of the month program, which I'm assuming you're referring to is completely through thrillshare. So all they have to do is use the word orange somewhere in the post. And then, Apptegy provides us with some exports of our live feed every month.

And so I'll just run a search for orange and, take a look. And those are who, nominated those people. And then I'll put it through some random name generator on, Google that you can just do. It's like a little spinning wheel and then somebody wins.

So that's how that's done.

Tyler Vawser: Well, we're at time, so I want to be respectful to everyone. And thank you so much for joining, Coty and me. Thank you, Coty, for presenting. So, the presentation, I think, is the easiest part.

The hard part is really building a program like this and being consistent with it. So I know many of you use ThrillShare already. Right. And so I hope this gives you ideas.

You have these tools. And so start a conversation with us, but start a conversation internally about how you can start to build in collective authorship if that's the direction, and I hope it is, that you want to go with your district where you have really great brand equity because you're having equitable storytelling and you're bringing a lot of voices into that process. So, yeah, Coty, do you want to add your email address to the chat?

And I'm also going to drop a link in there about a podcast that we recorded about a year ago with Dr. Collier, myself and Coty. And it provides a lot more context around how Saginaw was thinking about this before January twenty twenty three. Right?

So before it was a formalized program, the thinking and the culture and the mindset that they both have that really laid the foundation for a lot of this. So thank you, everyone, so much for joining. I'll send an email out probably tomorrow that has some more resources as well as some of the presentation slides so that you can refer back to it or if you want to share it with a colleague or a superintendent or comms director in your district, you can share that with them. All right.

So thank you all so much and have a great rest of the week.